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This album was a Christmas present from my brother, and came with the added bonus of a DVD pairing every song on the album with footage of Elbow playing live or fooling about in the studio, which was surprisingly interesting as these kinds of extras go. I’ve got—and love to bits—another of their albums, “Asleep in the Back”, so I was really looking forward to hearing this one.

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This is just a quick entry for my CD of the week, as I’ve recently mentioned this particular piece of music before. It’s also unusual for me to cover singles, but this is a very honourable exception. When Caitlin mentioned that this single might just beat the legions of shoddy cover versions and excruciating pop pap to the Christmas number one slot, I immediately went out and searched for the single. After a bit of hunting, I found a copy, so I’d like to think that I’ve played some tiny part in its success. I’ve just heard that it has made it—’Mad World’ is number one for Christmas.

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p. This was the first Elliott Smith album I had ever listened to, and it’s still one of my favourites. When my brother lent me this CD, I’d never heard of the guy, but I was instantly hooked. This review is something of a belated tribute to Elliott Smith, as I’ve just heard this week about his [“sad death(Some very sad news)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000538.html].

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p. I started to listen to Dead Can Dance a few years ago, and I’ve also followed the solo work of Lisa Gerrard—one half of the band—after Dead Can Dance split up. I’ve been trying to think how to describe their music to you, and I have to say it’s pretty difficult. Their image is goth, but their music encompasses medieval, Middle Eastern, Irish folk, Native American and trance music. The thing that holds this whole melange together—in my opinion—is Lisa Gerrard’s incredible voice. Lisa is the female equivalent of a counter-tenor; her voice is unusually deep, and if you didn’t know what sex she was, “male? female?” would be flicking back and forth across your mind, like an auditory version of that vase-face visual illusion.

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p. I don’t often buy compilation albums, but I stretch a lot of rules where the Real World Records label is concerned. I have a few of the albums featured on this compilation, but it has also prompted me to get albums by some of the artists I hadn’t previously heard, like Geoffrey Oryema and Yungchen Lhamo. The album—as the name suggests—focuses on the vocal talents of the artists. A huge variety of vocal styles are represented, from Tibetan singing, through Georgian table music to some amazing Sardinian tenore signing.

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I have a Canadian friend to thank for introducing me to Nick Drake. I’d never heard of him, but as soon as I listened to the superb melodies, the strong guitar playing and—best of all—Nick Drake’s gentle, almost frail voice, I was hooked. I’m keen on choosing music which matches my mood, and Nick Drake is perfect Autumn listening. In fact the lyrics do contain several direct references to Autumn, but the music itself is quietly melancholy and perfect when the nights start drawing in.

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p. I always struggle to describe Laurie Anderson’s music to other people. She plays rather avant-garde music, which is part performance art and part story-telling. She has always used electronic instruments extensively (including some of her own making), and many of her songs involve her deepening the pitch of her voice dramatically to form what she calls ‘the voice of authority’. If that description has convinced you that you would hate this album, then I can only say that I’ve just proved my own point: you really need to listen to her music rather relying on my feeble descriptions.

p. My own first introduction to Laurie Anderson (and her only chart hit in the UK) was the first track on this album—’O Superman’. I hated it with a passion. In my defence, I was in my early teens, and mainly listening to Michael Jackson at the time, so it was perhaps not surprising that I just didn’t get it. It also sounds horrible on a tinny radio—you really need to hear it in a quiet environment, and on a decent stereo to pick up all the subtleties. I’ve been lucky enough to see her perform live a few times, and on the last occasion (a few months after 9/11), she performed ‘O Superman’. It blew me away. It has always been quite a moving and disturbing song—with an atmosphere of loss, alienation and fear—but it has gained whole new layers of associations.

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p. This album (along with another titled ‘The Zen Kiss’) was one of my many impulse purchases made solely on the basis that it was recorded on Pete Gabriel’s Real World label—Peter and I evidently share a particular taste in music, and I’ve never been disappointed yet by one of these impulse buys. Sheila Chandra is a superb British-Asian singer, who cleverly mixes together different vocal traditions (now you see where the title comes from). Both of the albums I’ve mentioned are unusual because they have very little in the way of instrumental backing. On most of the tracks, Sheila sings totally unaccompanied, and in a few she just has a string drone playing in the background. It’s an incredibly brave thing to do, but her voice is so interesting and strong, and her seamless slipping between vocal styles is so compelling that the albums never become repetitive.

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Daniel Lanois is one of those artists who record new albums very rarely, but whose output I await eagerly. Given the quantity and quality of his ‘other work’, I’m amazed that he gets anything of his own recorded at all: he has produced albums for U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, and collaborated with other eminent musicians like Brian Eno. I have his two previous albums (‘Acadie’ and ‘For The Beauty of Wynona’), and I love them to bits. ‘Acadie’ is a very intimate album, with a lot of allusions to Acadian/Cajun culture and song. It’s almost rough—but I mean that in a good way! ‘For The Beauty of Wynona’ is different again, evoking industrial landscapes and the lives of blue-collar workers, and has a darker tone, especially on the title track. So I was curious about where he was going to go with ‘Shine’.

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While I was working on whale watching tours in the Isle of Mull, the secretary of the tour outfit and I were discussing the kinds of music we liked. When I mentioned that I was quite fond of non-traditional folk, she said, “Oh, then you might like the band that my fiancé is in then—they’re called Capercaillie. She lent me a tape, and it wasn’t long before I was singing ‘Fear a bhata (Oh my boatman)’ at the top of my lungs into the wind when all the tourists were huddling inside the boat. I’ve been a firm fan ever since, even though the fiancé (John Saich) has since left the band.

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mouthmusic is a band I’ve followed for several years, and which has spun off a number of my favourite artists, including Martyn Bennett and Talitha Mackenzie. The spinning off seems to have been rather too successful, and now the founder of the band, Martin Swan, seems to be on his own. However, on this latest album, he has some very talented guests helping him out: Martin Furey, Ishbel Macaskill and Kaela Rowan. At their best, mouthmusic seamlessly weave togther traditional Scottish folk music, Middle-Eastern and African music, electronic music and jazz. It might sound an odd mixture, but believe me—it works!

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p. I’ve been a fan of “Martyn Bennett’s (Site is offline at time of writing)”:http://www.martynbennett.com since his debut in the band “Mouthmusic (Review of their latest album)”:http://www.nettwerkamerica.com/artist.php?artist_id=29 , and I’ve followed his solo career with a great deal of interest. Martyn is absurdly young and talented, and (it transpires in the liner notes for ‘Glen Lyon’) from a long and distinguished line of musicians. His great great grandfather, grandmother and mother all feature on the album. It is a slight departure from his normal style; quieter, more traditional. I once saw a memorable description of his own little genre as ‘acid croft’. If this is right, then Glen Lyon is more ‘croft’ than ‘acid’.

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p. I don’t really like country music. That is, I don’t really like country music as a genre — I do like some “country artists (Steve Earle - Jerusalem)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000128.html as individuals. ‘The Man Comes Around’ is an interesting album of some original tracks and some covers, performed in Johnny’s inimitable style — and now rather ageing voice. Some tracks I love, and some I hate (nothing can make me like “We’ll meet again” — the Vera Lynn song).

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p. This album is subtitled ‘Unguents, Fig Leaves and Tourniquets for the Soul’, which for me just about says it all. This is Richard Thompson at his brilliant, bitter best. Many of the songs are epic folk ballads for our time, with a great narrative line. ‘A Love You Can’t Survive’ tells the old story of a man who promises to return to his love, but then kills someone in a street fight and has to go on the run, and ends up trying to smuggle a ‘half-ton of charlie’ into New Orleans harbour. The old, old story…

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I’ve been listening a lot to Kate Bush this week. This isn’t in itself very unusual—-I’ve been listening to her music for as long as I’ve been interested in music at all—-but this past week my iPod finger has been dialling up ‘Artists > Kate Bush > All’ regularly.

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